272 Mr St John on the Mongols, 



on cheese, curds, and whey. The Mongols, as we have seen, 

 like the ancient ^Ethiopians, indulge occasionally in meat ; 

 but milk, and the substances extracted from it, still form 

 their staple articles of food. Mares* milk is generally pre- 

 ferred, — not, as was believed in the last century, because the 

 cows will not suffer themselves to be milked, but because, on 

 turning sour, it acquires a slightly inebriating quality. When 

 in this state, Pallas informs us, it is called koumiss — the kos- 

 mo8 of Rubruquis, the kemuls of Marco Polo, and suggests 

 Coray, the oxygala of Strabo. It is from this koumiss that 

 the brandy I have already mentioned is manufactured. In 

 winter, says Witzen, when the mares are less lactiferous, a 

 beverage composed of snow water, honey, and millet, is sub- 

 stituted. It is obvious that the constant use of food so pe- 

 culiar, for a long succession of ages, must have strikingly in- 

 fluenced the physical character of the Mongols ; and that the 

 substitution of a vegetable diet, which would be consequent on 

 an alteration in their mode of life, would work considerable 

 changes in them. 



But on the nomadic mode of life depends, also, the con- 

 stant use of horse-exercise, which I conceive to be one of the 

 principal causes of some of the characteristics of the Mongols. 

 Coray, in his learned notes on Hippocrates, enlarges on the 

 diseases to which equestrian nations are peculiarly liable. On 

 this theme I am not competent to enter ; but it is easy to 

 understand how, in this way, their moral character may be 

 affected. Not, however, to lengthen out this speculation, some 

 of the distinguishing characteristics of the Mongols, — I mean 

 the shortness and outward curvature of their legs, and the 

 smallness of their feet, — ^would, I think, entirely disappear as 

 soon as their present mode of life should be changed. 



